


Sand devils

by Halfspell



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, I don't know, Original work - Freeform, Other, Putting it here to keep track of it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-03
Updated: 2017-09-03
Packaged: 2018-12-23 12:40:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11989998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Halfspell/pseuds/Halfspell
Summary: Just a short story I wrote. This is the easiest place to put it to keep track of it.





	Sand devils

If he hadn't been watching, Julian wouldn't have seen where it was that Peter ducked out of view. As it was, the sand was blowing hard enough that he nearly missed it. One moment, the shadowy bulk that was Peter trudged ahead of him, and the next he was gone. Julian slowed, squinting through his goggles at the ground until the break in the sand and rock resolved itself and he swung down into the blessedly still air. The wind still howled up above, but down here, there was a breath of peace.

Peter, goggles in sand stiffened hair, was busy brushing grit from pitted and scored instruments so he could tuck them safely away. After a moment, Julian followed suit, tugging goggles off and dropping a pack from his shoulders. Cascades of dirt and sand tumbled from creases in his clothing. Peter, noticing the movement, looked up and grinned. His teeth were startlingly white in his dirt darkened face, even in the fading light.

  
"It's a good place to stop," Peter said. "Especially with the weather turning so piss poor. We're lucky."

"We would have found someplace, if not here." Julian was quiet as he unwound layers, shaking them out and dropping them besides his pack. Eventually, he dropped down besides his pack, too, and began pulling zippers, looking for something to dole out as a meal. “It's good though.”

  
Peter grunted and settled down as well, pulling things out of Julian's hands, smile only a little dimmed in the face of Julian's melancholy. “It's a great place and I'm brilliant for remembering it. It's only a day off of the river and then half a day to the city. It's a perfect stop."

  
"It's a perfect stop," Julian agreed absently while Peter unpacked and bustled, pulling tabs on self-heating rations. There was too much sand in the air to think about cooking. Not unless they wanted to eat grit with their bread. Even drinking water was a grit hazard; sand sticking to their lips and the canteen made for little refreshment, but the idea of the river perked Julian up a bit. Just a bit.

  
Peter, naturally, caught it.

  
"A bath tomorrow for us and our stuff," he agreed with the unspoken sentiment. "And we'll spend most of the night there, since we want to hit the city at dawn. It'll take a while to suss out a safe spot and set up and I don't want to be scrambling at sunset." Julian watched with seeming facination as Peter shoveled food into his mouth. After a few quiet moments, he offered what was left of his own rations. Peter frowned, but the cloud was quick over his sunny smile and he took the leftovers without fuss to shovel those down as well. Julian was thankful Peter didn't complain.

  
The morning saw the last of the sandstorm hurrying off, blowing down and away and scouring the sky free of clouds. And true to Peter's word, evidence of the river began to turn up right after noon meal. The ground became less sand soft and more firm soil and the very air seemed touched with moisture, soothing sand stung cheeks. The river's murmuring was very near a benediction to Julian's weary being.  
Julian bent and washed, splashing water over his face and head and body, but Peter stripped off his packs and threw himself into the water bodily, shouting joyously as he went under. He came up sopping wet and grinning, shaking himself all over like a dog when he reached the banks. It made Julian sit back a bit, avoiding the spray even though he himself was already wet. Peter saw the draw back and something dimmed in his eyes, making him wade out of the water at a more sedate pace than he threw himself into it. Still, he had no qualms on invading Julian's personal space and dropped himself down alongside, squelching a little in the grass.

  
After a moment of sunshine baking off water, Peter asked, "What will you do if we find him?"

  
Julian felt his lips tightening up into a thin line, felt his forehead crease. "I don't know." This was a fruitless search, he knew. There was no way any sort of life would be found in the city. Marcus's life was gone and it was only Peter's misguided and innocent belief in closure that bought him a guide this far. What would he do if he found his brother in the city? The question made him sick to his stomach. Julian, as a distraction, began to pull at the grass growing between his feet.

  
Peter leaned towards him a bit, until their shoulders touched, and though Julian's skin crawled to try and get away from that contact with his old friend, he let the closeness be. It made Peter think he was being comforting and Julian couldn't take that away.

  
It was about an hour or two after dawn when they hit the outskirts of the city. Peter drifted to a stop, squinting at stunted trees and patting at pockets for his charts. There was a calculating look in his eyes as he unfolded papers and tapped at pocket electronics. It left Julian with time to touch lightly at the strange buildings, abandoned and ancient but strangely new looking, too. He turned back when Peter made a hissing sound. "Leave nothing behind," he told Julian, suddenly serious and all crumbs of joy tucked safely away.

  
"I won't."

  
"Here. Some people have these special fold away brooms, but a palm frond works best. Well, for me." Peter handed over a frond, nearly dessicated, that he had plucked up off the ground during their trek. Julian took it, bemused, and held it against his chest. It crackled under his palms. "Oh, to sweep our footprints away. Leave nothing behind."  
Leave nothing behind. It sounded like a chant or a prayer. "Even footprints?" Julian trailed the frond behind him, combing sandy dirt smooth as they walked.

  
"Yeah. I'll show you why later. C'mon. We have to find the secondary safe site."  
As they walked, Julian kept his own footprints close to Peter's, so that the trailing branch behind them swept everything clean with a minimum of effort. Most of his wandering attention was devoted to the dust covered city rising up around them, oddly new and old at the same time. The deeper they penetrated into the city, the odder Julian felt, until the anxiety was enough to make his stomach churn and bile rise in the back of his throat. Peter seemed oblivious, checking charts and instruments like this was a normal working day for him.

  
Julian felt his eyes straining and his heart thudding irregularly when Peter finally declared a stop. Clenching his fists, Julian fought his body for control while Peter pointed to a building with a large window on the second story. "There. That's the secondary site. Probably the primary site, now that the original primary's been compromised."

  
"Compromised?" The word came out tight, choked in his fists, and Peter looked back at his friend with concern.

  
"Compromised. We're close enough to see it from here, though. We'll see if anything's there tonight." Peter, unapologetically, waved Julian into the building but not before taking away the palm frond. Oddly, he left three deliberate footprints leading to nowhere in the dust before hurrying after Julian, sweeping behind him. The footprints stood out crisp and sharp in the unforgiving sun.

  
The rest of the day was passed in obeying Peter's requests, battening themselves down into what Peter insisted was safety. When sunset caught them, they were shrouded in a tent which itself was shrouded in what amounted to moldy old fabric and camoflauging. Just to keep visibility from the window down, Peter insisted.

  
As the light failed, Peter sat taut, nerves and muscles singing in tension and Julian thought he'd go mad.

 

  
It started out as a phosphorescent smudge on the air, like dirty fingerprints on glass. Nothing really alarming save for a bit of dust in the eye. In fact, Julian spent several moments rubbing at his eyes, convinced that there was dust or goop in them until Peter reached over and caught Julian's hands. He shook his head and gestured silently to the street with his chin. Julian dropped his hands, fingers flexing and eyebrows raised and stared at his friend. Smiling a little, Peter gestured again.

  
When Julian looked again, the smudges had grown, taken on defined shape, walked, seemed to talk to one another. Julian sat staring as people went about business that remained long after they did. It all seemed so normal, so harmless, except over Peter's footprints. There was a sound like a wet fingernail on glass and the person, the thing, the whatever, sprouted joints and teeth and claws everywhere until it resembled something out of a psycho's nightmare. Once it passed the footprints, the thing shrank and contorted itself until it resembled human again and went on its way.

  
Julian nearly screamed when Peter's lips touched his ear.

  
"That's why nothing's left behind," Peter breathed, fingers digging hard into Julian's arm to keep him still. The pain helped ground him; he felt like he was going mad and there was still more to see. "Don't .. don't do things to grab attention. Those things will come after us if you do."

  
"What are they?" Julian turned his head to speak, to whisper, but his eyes stayed fixed on the street and the flickering things, innocent and evil looking by turns.

  
"Nightmares." Peter shrugged. His grip tightened still further for a moment and he sucked in a quick breath.

  
Across the street, flickering shapes in a window caught their attention. When they burst from the building, running frantically instead of the sedate flickering and walking the other things moved at, it startled them both and Julian found his hand stealing into Peter's. Peter squeezed as they watched.

A sweet faced woman from his village, Julian knew her to be named Emily, tore past them, terror-stricken, only to flicker into a nightmare horror of herself as she pelted over Peter's footprints. Two other men scattered down side streets, one in the opposite direction that Emily took. In the dust, mouth open in a scream no one could hear, was Marcus.

  
The wail started somewhere in the back of his throat, choking itself silent, while Marcus thrashed, trying to beat off invisible assailants. There was no blood, just thick terror and silence and Marcus holding out his hands as he spasmed. When Marcus went still, eyes staring accusingly across the street at him, Julian sobbed, once, softly. Peter's hand gripped at his arm again and he hissed, barely a breath of air, demanding silence. When Julian looked over, he saw two streaks in the dirt on Peter's face; reaching up to his own cheeks, he felt what had to be the same through the dirt on his own face.

  
It took him several moments to pry Peter's fingers from his arm. There had to be bruises there, he could feel the ache left behind. But it was a candle in the furnace of the ache in his heart, watching his brother lay in the dirt. Even knowing that if he went over and tried to touch him, Marcus would only stretch into a heart eating nightmare didn't help the ache any. Julian spent long moments trying to find breath and stillness and finding very little left to him. There was nothing else. Julian rose and moved to push aside the fabrics shielding them.  
"Stay here," he whispered.

  
He had counted on Peter being stuck in a moment of confusion and denial, giving him time to fling himself down and out onto the street. He didn't get that moment.

  
Instead of sputtering and protesting, Peter grabbed the back of Julian's belt and pulled hard, sending Julian down onto his rump in the tent. Before their struggle could drawn attention to their lives, Peter closed the shroud of their tent and then threw himself bodily atop Julian, eyes white all around and breathing harsh and terrified. Peter's hands closed on Julian's nose and mouth, shaking against his face, and Julian tried to slap them away.

  
"No no no, I can't believe I was so stupid," Peter hissed, breath hitching and body bent to hold Julian down and to hold the sobs in. "No no, don't, no..."  
Eventually, with his breath cut off, Julian felt darkness approaching. It wasn't the darkness he wanted, but he took it as an easy way out.

 

  
Julian didn't wake until he was being hauled out of the transport. There was a fuzzy mindedness to him that told him that Peter had resorted to drugs to keep him out. The physical aches told him that Peter wasn't kind in dragging him back.  
They tried to be kind at the clinic, he knew, but there wasn't much kindness he would accept from anyone, and in the end the doctors resorted to drugs to try to bring about his healing.

  
In the clinic's gardens, as gentle and green as the desert was harsh and dry, Julian found Peter, sitting in the grass and trying harder to heal than Julian was. Julian sat next to him, but did not bring about any physical contact. Peter shifted away even from that.

  
Julian let the silence build between them, unsure how to break it. He knew it was an uncomfortable silence, but the cushioning of the drugs didn't let him feel much of it. Peter, true to himself, broke it.

  
"I can't believe I fell for it. I .. yes I can. I just .. wanted you to be better." Peter tore at blades of grass, plucking them up and shredding them to green confetti before starting again. "How could you use me like that? You didn't think about how I'd feel, watching you die and then coming home to tell people about it?"

  
"I guess..." Julian trailed off, watching the sky for a moment, gathering his thoughts. "I guess when you don't want to anymore.. you don't really think about how the gun feels when you pull the trigger."

  
Peter laughed a little, bitterly and without any joy, and picked himself up to leave.

  
Julian never saw him again.

**Author's Note:**

> Just a short story I wrote. This is the easiest place to put it to keep track of it.


End file.
